Give these gentlemen a round of ap-paws.
What was supposed to be a relaxing trip for two pals and their fishing guide turned into a rescue mission when a stray pack of dogs wandered about a mile away from the shore of Grenada Lake in Mississippi.
Thank goodness, the pups were able to tread water long enough — some of them for about an hour — that the fishermen could rescue all 38 of them on separate haul trips with their modest-sized boat, as initially reported by Fox News (via New York Post).
Those pictures are worth a thousand words, aren’t they? According to a report by Action News 5, the dogs got lost on a fox hunt when they were chasing a deer. Another man with a GPS tracker helped locate even more dogs in the water once the anglers (61-year-old Bob Gist and his friend Brad Carlisle), and guide (Jordan Chrestman) had already made three different trips.
Per the original Fox write-up, Gist credited Chrestman with the rescue, as he understood immediately that something was amiss for the dogs to be so far off the shoreline:
“If Brad and I had been there in a boat by ourselves, we wouldn’t have known anything was wrong, but that 20-something-year-old kid – I’m 61, so I’m calling him a kid – he knew something needed to be done…
That kid had the presence of mind to know, ‘If we don’t do something, there’s going to be 38 dead dogs here.’ And he saved them, I mean we all pulled them in, but that kid is the hero here.”
Can’t commend these men enough for what they did. It’d be so easy to let that pack of dogs be somebody else’s problem, or to lose composure once you do decide to take action. With dogs’ lives hanging in the balance, and the clock ticking, with no telling how long they could tread water for, the lads managed to save every single one of them.
Both reports cited above indicated that the dog owners were understandably distraught, and yelled from the shore for help. Fox reported that Chrestman was offered money as a reward for spearheading the rescue effort, but naturally, he turned down the cash.
It’s kind of surreal that so many dogs were this determined as a collective to keep swimming so far away from the safety of land. Can’t imagine how odd that must’ve felt for the fishers to see such a staggering quantity of canines in a most unusual location. So glad they took action in time. Check out a quick video below of the story from Nashville’s WKRN 2 News.
